Bullying

ICQ was the big thing when I was a kid. It was one of the Internet’s first live chat rooms, very popular with the kids in the early years when it was still referred to as “the Worldwide Web” and your dial-up modem took 10 minutes at minimum to connect, so you had to really want it. Every single kid in my junior high class had ICQ and squealed to each other about how exciting it was over recess. Continue reading →

Children are being wrongly prescribed anti-depressants as a result of being bullied, a leading mental health campaigner has said.

The Department for Education‘s mental health advisor, Natasha Devon, said kids need support from bullying, rather than being prescribed medication.

“If a child is being bullied and they have symptoms of depression because they are being bullied, what they need is for the bullying to stop,” Devon said at the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference.

Who is Likely to Become a Bully?

Bullying can have a wide-ranging impact on teens – from victims, to those who witness bullying, to the bullies themselves – and affect each one well into adulthood.

Bullying can lead teenagers to feel tense, anxious, and afraid. It can affect their concentration in school, and can lead them to avoid school in some cases. If bullying continues for some time, it can begin to:

affect teens’ self-esteem and feelings of self-worth.

increase their social isolation, leading them to become withdrawn and depressed, anxious and insecure.

Without the internet, Rebecca believes her bullies would have lost interest beyond the school gates.

But in the always online world of social media, her aggressors were able to track her down and continue their abuse outside the classroom.

“I was getting bullied verbally face-to-face at school but I was also getting bullied online after school,” says Rebecca, now 17. “There were people who would call me up and say mean things to me, and then they would go onto Facebook and write statuses that weren’t very pleasant about me.

“But I didn’t want to get off social media because everyone used it and I didn’t want to be out of reach. I wanted to have my own online space.” Continue reading →

CANADIANS everywhere are taking a stand on Wednesday (February 24) against bullying by participating in Pink Shirt Day. UBC’s Shelley Hymel, a professor in the faculty of education, explains why the effects of bullying can last a lifetime, and offers insight into how to address it.

How is bullying defined?

Bullying is a unique form of aggression characterized by three things: it’s intentional, in that the bully wants to have an impact on the victim; it’s repeated over time, which provokes extreme anxiety in the victim; and there is a power differential at play—whether it’s to do with size, age, popularity or in numbers. Continue reading →